Hidden Behind A Smiling Face
by Neko Kuroban
Summary: I'll try to smile.


Hidden Behind A Smiling Face By Neko Kuroban

My ankle is sprained, but I'm grinning at Quatre. "It's nothing," I'm saying, sprawled out over the couch. My foot is propped up on a pillow. "Seriously, Quat! I'm fine."

Smile, smile, smile.

I flop back, and Heero's words from this morning echo in my mind:

"You treat our missions as if they're all one big video game."

Oh, Heero! If only you knew! It's so much easier to think of it all as a video game. We're fifteen! We should be playing video games. Treating our missions like a game helps: it makes the danger we're repeatedly facing to not seem so REAL. Video games are simple. When the screen flashes GAME OVER, you lean over and hit restart. Too bad it's not like that in real life.

"We shouldn't be fighting."

That's what Quatre says, and I guess he's right. I used to think he was an overeducated private school brat, completely out of touch with reality. I still don't think I'm too far off from the truth, but he's right. We all want peace.

He's wrong, too: he doesn't realize that we have to fight to attain that peace.

We have to.

"Of all the names I've ever had, I prefer Nanashi the best."

Trowa tries to hide it, but I can see the doubt in his eyes. He doesn't know who's right - me or Quatre. Heero or Wufei. How can he? We don't even know if we're right. Trowa's more like me than he cares to admit. I grew up carrying a knife on the streets, but Trowa learned how to shoot a gun before he was old enough to know what war really is.

"I am not worthy to pilot Nataku."

The truth is that Wufei is probably more worthy to pilot than any one of us.

We have all suffered losses, but I've heard the rumors and put enough together to know that his was probably the worst. He told me he was from the colony that was destroyed, and there was an article in one of the underground newspapers that told me the rest.

I wish I could tell him to stop trying to hide Merian's memory in the recesses of his mind. That doesn't do her any honor. Walking around with a chip on his shoulder, afraid to show emotion until it bursts forth, obsessed with trying to find the meaning of the word "justice"...

She wouldn't want that.

"I will kill you."

I wonder if Heero knows that by now we've all figured it out that he doesn't mean it?

"My hands are stained with blood..."

All of us carry blood on our hands.

All five of us. Me. Quatre. Trowa. Heero. Wufei.

We all carry the blood of the poor men and women destined to lay eyes on a Gundam. The blood of my street family and my foster parents. The blood of the man who raised Heero. The blood of Wufei's dead clan. His teachers. His wife, Meiran. All the other victims of OZ's wrath.

It all soils our hands.

I wonder if the others know I admire them?

No one believes in justice and honor the way Wufei does.

Trowa's quiet, but he's a friend when you need him-and he's soothing to be around, the way the sisters at the church were.

Heero's grown on me. He's the smartest person I know. He's not half as hard as he thinks he is, and I can see him changing, day by day.

Quatre, too. He's growing up. Where once I saw nothing but a spoiled rich kid I now see a young man determined to prove himself. Wufei asked him if he was trying to make his father proud, and Quatre said no. "I'm trying to make myself proud."

Even Relena. I used to joke about her: oh, Heero, someone's got a stalker with a crush! Last time I saw her, I had nothing to say. She was strong, determined, level-headed. How is this politician the same girl who cried when Heero refused to come to her birthday party?

The thing is this: they're all growing up. They all know who they are.

But what about me?

I call myself the God of Death. It sounds like a name a teenager in a video arcade would pick for himself: Shinigami.

Does it fit? Is that what I truly am?

Wufei says Treize Kushrenada knew how many men and women died in his service. I have no idea how many I've killed, soldiers or civilians. It's a chilling thought sometimes. If this wasn't war, I'd be considered a dangerous homicidical murderer.

Casualty.

The word doesn't sound like its meaning.

An innocent life, taken.

Are we actually achieving anything by fighting? Sometimes I wonder. Or...are we just continuing what OZ started?

I don't know the answers as of yet.

Maybe some day.

For now?

I think I'll try smiling. 


End file.
